blood drop

This morning I had some blood taken from me.

Sheba and I decided it was time to undergo a small battery of tests to take a quick peek into how our bodies are dealing with middle-age. So we showed up bright and early at the lab of a reputed local hospital for our bloods.

Sheba - who is needle-phobic - was very brave and her ordeal first. Given the number of tests, the lady ended up taking what seemed to me a mammoth syringe of blood out of my dear wife.

Then it was my turn.

The lady taking the blood from me deftly found the little lump of a vein - and in slipped the needle. Totally painless. I don't think I have ever experienced being pricked - without feeling that I was being pricked.

Well - I take that back. Our dear friends the Anopholes and other spp. of mosquito end up pricking me all the time without my knowning it - at the time at least.

Anyway - the syringe was merrily filling up with my dark-coloured blood when I looked at the ladies hands.

They were gloveless.

She withdrew the needle and handed me a cotton swab to put on the site. She then put the needle in the needle-cutter on her desk. And then with her bare hands she took the three vaccu-tubes for the three tests to be done on my blood - and squirted the appropriate amount in each.

I looked down on the desk and saw a drop and a small smudge of my dark blood that had not been before.

I know that I do not have HIV - and so my blood poses no threat to this dear lady. But my word what about the next person in line.

The little spot of blood and the dark smudge next to it tell us something.

25 years after HIV was first detected in India - we still do not have the routine of protecting ourselves. The dear lady with her ungloved hands - and blood dropping routine - at one of the best hospitals in Thane tells us that we have failed to bring about a culture of basic universal precautions in health care in our country.